(Justice Records/Inertia)

Just what exactly was Neil Busch’s role in …Trail Of Dead? Clearly, at its most literal interpretation the answer would be "he was the bassist and key sound manipulator until his less-than-amicable departure in 2004", but his true position in the band may have been more than bringing in the bottom end. After the red hot 2002 release of Source Tags & Codes, a defining punk rock album of the early millennium, things went a little bit off the rails with 2005’s Worlds Apart and the following year’s So Divided. And while correlation does not imply causation, it is possible that Busch may have previously played a roll in reeling in the more pretentious elements of this art rock five piece from Austin. Whatever the reason, that’s in the past, and these guys have finally began to crawl back to their former glory with a new set of tightly wound musical attacks about death, depression, war and all those other sunny topics. True, album opener Giant Causeway is 150 seconds of pompous prog rock synths and rolling drums, but it quickly leads into the best dual vocal line that Conrad Keely and Jason Reece have done in years on Far Pavilions. A number of songs may still teeter on the brink of self-love (the almost alt-country of Luna Park springs to mind), but a reinvigorated intensity gives them more purpose than ending up as a spent tissue buried in your waste paper basket. Yes, yet another masturbation reference.

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MITCH ALEXANDER